In the wake of the Proton controversy, I've been looking towards alternatives towards their services. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a good alternative to ProtonVPN. I'm looking for the following in a VPN service:

  • Port forwarding support
  • Open source
  • Android app and Firefox extension available
  • Relatively cheap, around $3-4 month (okay with annual pricing)

The only options I found were Private Internet Access and Windscribe, but I found issues with them. If I'm cutting ties with Proton based on ideals I disagree with, I should be rejecting alternatives on the same basis.

Based on what I saw in the PIA subreddit, Private Internet Access seems to have some issues with service reliability and concerns about its ownership having ties to Israel, implying Zionist affiliation. Windscribe seems to have better service, but they have had a questionable social media history: edgy marketing including an AI-generated Hitler and a controversy where, according to them, they joked about a guy being mentally ill but their post easily looked like they were saying trans people are mentally ill.

Is there an option I missed? Should I try one of these options despite their faults? I'd like to know your thoughts.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 1 point 17 hours ago

Remember that the VPS doesn't see any address or data, only IP.

this is just DoH + HTTPS. You can use DoH and HTTPS with proxy or VPN, and your ISP would only see IP and not domain names or data.

Furthermore, some sites work better with WARP

Not relevant to this discussion, which has been about privacy from the beginning

If I really cared about the privacy of the IPs of the sites, I could route everything through WARP

WARP is just cloudflare's VPN. So, just like any other VPN, you would have to trust Cloudflare. Note that all your traffic to WARP would be tied to your Cloudflare account. Doesn't matter if you use a VPS as the first hop.

I often change the Oracle VPS IP with a shell script.

The issue from the beginning is that Oracle could simply be selling your data, which includes every VPS IP change. Oracle is not a privacy business, and really shouldn't be trusted

  • source
  • parent